Memories
by Tigerclaw
Summary: A Nosferatu neonate reflects on his embrace, meeting his coterie, and his first encounter with the Sabbat.


My name is Donovan Lucas. I'm a Thirteenth Generation Neonate of the Clan Nosferatu in the Camarilla controlled city of New Freedom. I've been a vampire for about four years now. Before, in life, I was just a skater with a penchant for trouble. 

Grew up in Brooklyn, stayed clean and graduated from high school. Was even starting college here in New Freedom. I was making mom proud. Then I met Bram. One night when me and a couple of boys were skating in the fountain in the park. He warned us the cops were coming and stopped us from getting arrested. Awful nice of him. Hung around him a little while afterward. Turns out he thought himself a graffiti artist.

Long story short, Bram embraced me two months after we met. Said he had a great new place to skate and to meet him there after dark. He surprised me and drank my blood, all of it. Made me a vampire like him.

In life, I was kinda handsome. I got enough honeys anyway. My hair was long and black, and I always kept my face cleanshaven. Mom says I had a face like an old time nobleman. With sharp features she always said. And my eyes were dark brown. I was just shy of six feet, but all muscle. I skated so much that I even had a six pack. The night I awoke…my skin was pasty white. My hair turned the same slate silver and I now keep it all the time in a ponytail. My nose is sharp and almost looks like a beak now, and my ears are super pointed. My mouth is full of jagged teeth just slightly shorter than my canines when I choose to release them. I even have what look to be ridges above my eyebrows. Once strong arms and legs are spindly now, though I haven't gotten any weaker. My fingernails are long and yellowed, almost like claws. In other words…I'm the ugliest son of a bitch you've ever seen. I used to like baggy JNCOs and tight shirts. Now I prefer cargo pants, heavy boots and baggy t-shirts with my long black trenchcoat that Bram gave me after I was embraced.

I've learned some neat tricks since those first few scary nights learning about what life as a vampire is like. Learning about the Clans and the Camarilla and Sabbat. Bram's trained me mercilessly in how to hunt and kill and fight with all sorts of weapons. I can use a sword now, and a gun. Can defend myself pretty mean with my fists too. Of course having disciplines helps. My Potence makes me strong as Schwarzenegger any day. I learned with Obfuscate how to fade into the shadows, and even make myself look like someone else. I'm even learning how to talk to animals now. Animalism, Bram calls it. Of course…Bram also lives in the sewer with his pet alligator. Not kidding.

Soon as I could learn the Traditions by rote, Bram took me to meet Prince Rupert Engles. Engles is about a millennia old and born in England back when they still had the Crusades going on. He's of Clan Ventrue, the Blue bloods, de facto rulers of Kindred and the Camarilla, and I don't think he likes the way I smell. But I passed the Acknowledgement easily enough and finally got to leave Bram's haven. I have my own Haven now, under the public library, in the basement.

It was a year after I was Embraced that I first ran into the Sabbat, and my coterie members. That was scary as hell. I was hunting, looking like a Chinese food delivery boy when I ran across these three licks beating down whom I recognized to be one of our local Brujah. A bad boy named Shane who broke hearts with his good looks (which turned my stomach) and broke heads with his huge muscles. The typical biker bad boy heartbreaker. I had seen Shane take down half a dozen mortals without a sweat before outside of an Elysium site, so these guys had to be pretty tough. I remember it like it was yesterday. They were all wearing leather jackets, and they all had this real zealous look in their eyes. Like cult members or something. Bram says they're kinda like cult members really, believing all these lies about how we're pawns of the Antediluvians and how we're going to help bring Gehenna about. Buncha fucking morons.

So anyway it's raining like crazy, and I'm in what can lovingly be referred to as New Freedom's Red Light district. Home to the crackheads and streetwalkers whose business hours ran between sundown and sunup. Perfect place to feed for an ugly son of a bitch like me. Not so perfect place to find a pack of Sabbat. Let me digress here a moment. The Camarilla, to which I'm a member, were formed about 500 years ago when the Inquisition was wiping us out. A bunch of older vampires got together and decided that it would be in our best interests and humanity's best interests if we hid ourselves behind an elaborate Masquerade. That isn't to say we're the good guys…every vampire is a monster. Deep down we have the Beast inside of us, and anytime it slips out…carnage follows. And some of the Elders of the Camarilla put motherfucking Dracula to shame. But the Sabbat is inhuman even by those low standards. They think they're fighting some kind of holy war and that we're on the side of the bad guys. They don't care about the Masquerade, only about slaughtering every last Cam lick. Anyway, so these guys are beating the hell out of Shane. And as I threw up my trick that lets me stay quiet in the shadows and approached, I could see why. 

Shane, for whatever reason, is afraid of crosses. It doesn't happen to most vampires, and I think he may have been religious in life or something, but whatever. Usually it's only the Faith of the wielder that can hurt a Lick, but Shane was cowering away from this little skinny bitch in a trenchcoat like mine with stringy blonde hair and a shit eating grin on her ugly face who had a crucifix in her hand. Didn't take much to recognize a clan mate, even across Sect boundaries. Her two friends might have been Brujah or maybe Gangrel, by their biker looking clothes. 

I was getting pissed off, I felt the Beast rattling inside its cage of carefully constructed self control. All I wanted to do was pounce on the bitch and tear her throat out and feel her warm, precious vitae flowing down my throat. Instead I carefully stepped closer, being real careful how much of a splash my footsteps made in the puddles. I figured if they were sharp they might be able to see my outline in the rain, but maybe they didn't. I felt the blood from the old bag lady I'd fed on burn as my muscles seethed with stolen power and my skin hardened against attack, preparing for battle. I pulled out a combat knife as I drew close…the bitch never saw what was coming. With every ounce of strength I drove that knife into her back and dragged the blade upward. With the help of my Potence enhanced strength I tore her head clean off her body. It's always a shame to kill a Clanmate, but in this instance I knew it was Sect before Clan. Soon as her body became dust and then soggy mess on the ground and the crucifix wasn't a problem anymore, Shane stood straight up.

He looked pissed, I don't think I'll actually forget that look in his eyes. The Beast was clawing at the door and there wasn't anyone to stop it from getting out. His hair was matted to his forehead but even still he looked beautiful, not just in looks but in raw power as he leapt toward the bigger of the two bikers with his mouth open and his fangs extended. I knew then that he was in Frenzy. No doubt about it. The man fired a gun point blank into Shane's chest several times but that couldn't stop the big Brujah from bearing him to the ground and tearing into him with his fangs and drinking deep. The struggles only lasted a moment before that was another Sabbat dusted. The last was definitely Gangrel. I'd no sooner sidestepped the frenzying Brujah than the stupid bastard tried to slash me from stem to stern with fingers that had become long nasty claws. I managed to parry just in time with my knife and to duck under a swipe that would have beheaded me. I'm quick, and I stabbed him again and again but he just kept coming, burning blood to close the wounds as quickly as I gave them. It was obvious a knife wasn't going to work.

I leapt back from the fucker, just as he finally hit me and tore open my chest in four long gashes that burned like hell. Those would take a nasty long time to heal even with lots of blood and rest, I knew. Then Shane was moving in a blur, almost fast enough that time seemed to slow down. His uppercut hit the last Sabbat and sent him reeling backward, slipping in the mud and falling to the ground. Shane was on him in a heartbeat once again and he seemed to move with the grace of a ballerina as he dipped his head down and raked his fangs across the 'grel's throat to rip it out. The body crumbled to dust soon after. 

That was a crazy night and me and Shane have been buds ever since. Last but not least is our Toreador coterie mate named Lise. But that's a story for another time. The sun is coming up, I can feel it. I really should get back to sleep. 'Til next time my young friend.


End file.
